


Till the Dead Don't Seem So Cold

by hedgerowhag



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Priests, Anal Sex, Blasphemy, Blood and Gore, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Extremely Dubious Consent, Featuring: the reason im glad i no longer have to go to church, Graphic Description of Corpses, M/M, Necrophilia, Religious Content, Violence, enough blasphemy to give an actual priest a heart attack, read notes for chapter 2 trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-12-12
Packaged: 2019-01-21 11:59:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12457314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hedgerowhag/pseuds/hedgerowhag
Summary: It is a season of hunger. It will not offer charity. The weakest feed the strongest with their flesh so they might feel the balm of summer.A raven coughs and a choir of voices replies. Hux watches from under his cap as a family of crows circles down into the forest. There must be a feast, he decides.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youdidnotseeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youdidnotseeme/gifts).



> WARNING:
> 
> a corpse getting stitched back up from being torn into pieces. but a very nice corpse, mind. gore (guts and blood and such). implied rape and very very dubious consent. religious blasphemy and cult shite (in case that bothers anyone). a very creepy priest. some vomiting. someone getting bludgeoned. 
> 
> HAPPY EARLY HOLLOWEEN Y'ALL!!!! fukin warning u there will be typos bc am lazy. aight? aight
> 
> the title is from 'dead man's arms' by bishop briggs

_Russian northern hinterlands, 1823_

 

The church bell tolls over the prayer that whispers with the wind passing through the doors of the hall. Someone can be forgiven for thinking the walls were painted their colour or that it is only the shadows on the icons that make the faces of Christ and saints so glum.

It smells cold, feels rotten. A prayer continues in the candlelight of the altar. Rosary beads knock like the feet of rats under the boards. Water dripping in the ceiling, falling onto the empty pews where the leaves of prayer books lie in rot.

Words chase, shivering over clasped hands. A man rocks on his knees, back of heavy black cloth bowed. The candles on the altar shake, shrinking on the stands by the stained icons.

The amen comes out in a cough and the gesture of a cross cuts the clergyman’s chest as he sits up against the beaten heels of his boots. His face seems bloodless in the light of the withering candles, but his lank hair is burnished like deep amber.

A gust pushes a breath of snow through the locked doors. The clergyman does not shiver as he stares at the raised cross where the gold embellished figure of Christ rests, headless.

Dusting the front of his black robe, the clergyman stands and turns from the altar. The bell rings from the tower as he walks. There is no one to haul the weights and pull the ropes to set the silver domes singing. There is no one in the church, but Hux.

The rafters creak and the floors whimper as the clergyman steps through the body of the church toward the doors that bow against the locks. Hux heaves them apart and the night of the church opens into the white wall of winter.

 

The wail of an eagle carries from the river that has been frozen since late autumn. There will be fish to catch, if the birds find a way through the ice. Hux stays from the water; it is there to ward him from the breach of the villages that have grown at the mouth the sea behind a horizon of pines.

A raven coughs. Hux can hear the snow creak under the feet of passing deer from down the bank of the river, miles from where he stands on the slope of a hill by the sleigh bound to a horse with a bowed back and gnarled hide. It treads like a man in prayer when Hux pulls the reins as he walks through the forest, searching for timber to mend what the storms have broken and burn away the church damp with red embers.

It would be prudent to call the masters from the towns to do their work on the church walls, but there is no path that will lead them to these hinterlands. Not even the one that Hux took some years ago from the cathedrals that were built by the tsar’s command.

Hux scoffs with a smile, thinking of the ministers that approached him to announce the death of a brother. The man had tended to a small, tattered church in the forgotten northern country that was built on the peak of a hill in the hopes of calling people to service from the towns. But the church never took to the bestowed blessing, it never carried the light of the Father. Instead, something coils in the corners of its wall, waiting in contempt.

After being sent away with a bundle of clothes and prayer beads on his fist, Hux took to feeding the shadows in the dark hours of night. All that could once fill their bellies was the warmth of blood from the clergyman’s split palms. But now he tries sate them with the warmth of what he drains into pails from the bloodied carcasses that hang in the stables after wandering souls come searching for asylum in the holy grounds. In turn, the shadows harbour Hux and keep his home.

The undergrowth of the forest shivers when a hare sprints from under Hux’s boots. He watches the hide of the animal flicker between the trees as the flees. The clergyman’s hands are frozen within the gloves that hold the reins of the snow coated horse.

It is a season of hunger. It will not offer charity. The weakest feed the strongest with their flesh so they might feel the balm of summer.

A raven coughs and a choir of voices replies. Hux watches from under his cap as a family of crows circles down into the forest. There must be a feast, he decides.

The horse follows like a blind man as the clergyman guides it through the snow between the naked birches. His boots sink to the knee and cold wet snowflakes cling to the frayed black hems of his clothes. Hux sees the dark birds skittering across the frozen ground ahead, following the tracks of some creature that had come and gone.

The ravens peck at one another as crows join in the echo of eagles – declaring interest in the meal that has been felled. Hux sees the tracks – struck red through the snow.

Birds scatter in the branches, shacking the icicles onto Hux as he releases the reins of the horse and forces his way ahead. Thrown across the snowbanks are dark husks of what Hux suspects to be bark, peeled by desperate animals for crude morsels of food. But the gathered birds do not pick at dead wood; it is flesh that snaps under their beaks.

Over there is a hand, grey and lumped with crusted blood, being picked by a magpie at the knuckles. There is a flank, cut but whole, being tested by some ravens for the morsels on the ribs. Off by some distance is a bootless leg with frostbitten toes and the pearl head of the bone. An arm is splayed with curled fingers, scored by a crow’s mark.

There is the head, thrown by the roots of the broken stump in the bed of his coal black hair. It falters Hux as something quiet strikes him when he sees the deadman’s eyes stare across the snow, the whites dotted with clotted blood. His purpled lips are the mouth to the red river at the tributary of which stands Hux.

A hungry feud breaks between the ravens as they scuttle for the scattered limbs and pluck at the frozen meat. The birds circle from Hux when he approaches the deadman’s head. He kneels in the red and takes the frost crusted face between the palms of his gloves, brushing aside the mottled black hair as he pulls it onto his lap. He presses his thumbs on the veined lids and crumbles the dusting of frost on the lashes.

Talons strike on the clergyman’s shoulder and a beak scrapes his neck between the cap and the tall collar. Hux hisses and swats away the bird that bounces from him with croaks.

Hux clutches onto the prizes and shouts the birds to be gone. The ravens only laugh, the crows heckle, but do not interfere when Hux stands and walks between the disfigured remains, staying his boots from the ropes of frozen innards that have been tested by a hoard of curious birds.

Hux sees the bruised lungs, the shrivelled stomach that had splattered bile and the kidneys like dried plums. He admires the thrown splay of legs, though in pieces and cut at the thighs as if in self-retribution. The arms are just as lovely, strong though starved, loved with the circles of bruises around them. The torn stumps of absent fingers make Hux grimace when he hears the birds.

It is a lovely mosaic of pieces, made to be stitched into a loveliest image of youth. Hux smiles down at the face in his hands, staring through him with blown eyes set in bruised hollows.

The clergyman whistles for the drifting horse and the crows scatter as the bowing animal plods forward, dragging the snow crusted sleigh behind its crooked legs. Hux throws aside the linen coverings from the bare timber and gently places down the head onto the sleigh. He gathers the remains from the snowdrifts and lays them out in the image of a whole in the timber belly, soothing every bruise and the open bloom of a cut that he can find.

It is peculiar, to think what could have wrung this young man of life like this: his flesh seems chewed but without marks of teeth and his bones are not broken but separated from their sockets. It is more as though he had been pulled until the muscle frayed and snapped and the bone gave away. His flesh, young and supple, was used for delicious indulgence, for perversity, until it was of no more interest.

Wiping the red crusts of snow from the bruised thigh lying limp by the socket of the hip with torn ligaments, Hux smiles. He presses his fingers into the frozen skin and scrapes his nails through the leather of his gloves, imagining the red lines that he could have cut.

Several pieces remain to be found: the fingers with blackened nails, gnawed toes, an ear – but that is irreparably lost. Hux drags the oiled linen over the sleigh, fitting the edges into the ribs of timber, and cleans the snow from his gloves before pushing through the frozen drifts toward the scorned horse.

The weight the beast carries makes it no more eager to move as the flight of winter clouds quickens. Hux feels the snow prickling on his face, cutting the numb red skin as he walks by the broken path toward the church.

The clergyman guides the sleigh through a plane of land that he witnessed in summer passing from a drought to a flood that swallowed the birch saplings growing in the hollow of the earth between the humps of tall grass. Hux watched the runts wither with years and their stumps become hosts to colonies of blueberry bushes, giving way to the strongest of their ilk.

The ground rises from the hollowed land. The surrounding hills are patrolled by a horde of pines standing proud and red against the snow drifts as the bell tower looks on aching against the grey sky. Hux hears it groan in the winds, the timber sore from the cold. The fence that surrounds the grounds stands like charred needles, rotting into debris after yearly neglect. The graves peer from the snow, arms of the crosses sloped – nameless since the day they were planted.

The shelter of the stable is only enough to keep away the wind as it bows under the snow drooping from the overhang. Hux glances to the rotting rafters as he unbuckles the horse from the harness and drags aside the sleigh through damp straw.

The clergyman is reverent, pulling away the linen from the belly of the sleigh. He reaches into the timber cradle, takes the weight of his prize into his palms and goes through the door of the shadowed sanctum.

There is nowhere safe, nowhere clean and pure, but for the altar at the head of the church. Hux dismisses the cross, the chalices and candles to the floor, spreading the cloth under deadman’s head.

There, he places the rigid shoulders and flayed torso. Below are spread the stomach and hips, paired with the ruptured flesh of the thighs. Hux closes the open skin like the seams of a coat on the chest, tucking the ribboning of guts between the open lips of the torso and the hollowed hips.

After all has been laid, Hux closes the church doors against the light and removes his cap and coat with the dirtied gloves stuffed into the pockets. He sets the candles around the altar and under the icons, catching the wicks in a spark of fire in the nooks of the murk. He delves out from the light and returns with a needle and a spool of thread – twisted with silver to kill the rot.

The clergyman approaches the altar as shadows shiver behind the pews with the dance of the waving candles. Taking up a folded cloth and bowl of fresh water, Hux sets to cleaning the yawning cuts and the inverted skin of the corpse lying on the shrine of Christ.

The clotted blood crusting the deadman’s lips is washed with a thumb wrapped in the damp cloth until the bruised purple of dead skin peer from underneath. Hux pries back the lips and wipes the dirt from the cracked teeth. He finds scraps of flesh trapped on the gums and between the gullies of the teeth that he clears the best he is able.

There is no comb under hand to pull the black hair of dirt and the blood scabs on the scalp. Hux feels crusted tears on the closed eyes when he soothes his thumbs over the lashes, pushing aside the crumbs of blood. He thinks the man’s nose to be broken, with its long curve disrupted by an unnatural turn. But there is nothing to be done. Nevertheless, he marvels at the deadman’s lovely features – so young and peaceful, innocent in the sweetest way.

The ragged tear that broke the head from the deadman’s neck is cleaned to the sound of the winding hushing in the rafters and the doors settling against the hinges. Hux’s hand are dark with warmed blood that has warmed to his touch. The thin red smiles on the cheeks and lips are hushed closed. The candle flames beneath the icons quiver on the wicks and shiver into darkness. Water pours over the hollowed stomach, staining the white cloth of the altar brown and red.

The stumps of the thighs are held and lavished with clean water. The cuts on the slack, soft muscle and pried of impurities and the broken bone is soothed by the clergyman’s hands. He scrubs the soles of the feet, calm in his method to rid of the stains, frowning at the loss of several toes and the frayed gashes on the ankles with ringlets of bruises.

The thread is pulled through the eye of the needle, cut and tied in the dim light. Cloth whispers as Hux leans over the altar to fit the flesh in the image of man, pulling the tears in place with the silver thread. The skin beside the absent ear creaks like the boards of the floors in the deep shadows rearing behind the clergyman as he pulls the thread taut.

The head, now attached to the torso by the neck, is lowered to the altar as Hux ties off the thread and cuts it free. He is disappointed to find the piece too short to continue the work and reaches for the spool on the corner of the altar, but the table is empty.

There is barely any light to go by as the candles set at the head of the church wink into darkness, leaving only the stubs beneath the gilded cross. Hux looks down to his feet to find the spool, hardly seeing his boots through the murk. He takes a step from the altar and stumbles when he hears a shriek as his heel catches on something unnatural. He turns.

Bulbous like ripe berries, two veined orange eyes stare at Hux from the height of his knee as rotting teeth in a skinless face, no larger than a cat’s, clatter. Talons skitter on the floor as the bulging eyes rise and fall through the dark, approaching Hux. He retreats by a step as small bloodied hands lift and offer a spool of thread.

Hux stares down on the little shaking palms that drip filth onto the floor and the silver thread uncoiling from the spool. A smile cuts his face and he reaches to take the spool from the trembling red fingers.

“Thank you,” Hux says to the creature and sets the thread on the altar, unspooling the glimmering web.

The clergyman cuts a length and pulls the thread through the eye of the needle. He smiles when he feels a tug on the hem of his heavy woollen robe.

Sharp points of bones clatter between the pews and the far corners of the church hall under the icons of the saints. Animal laughter echoes in the rafters of the carved roof as the dark brims with shapes. The clergyman works, closing with sutures the lips of the cuts, decorating the deadman’s ashen chest with rows of ribbed silver and replacing the starved arms to their sockets.

A thread is cut and voices chitter like insect wings. The clergyman does not look from his attended work as tittering hands pull on the edges of the altar, clutching the white covering as small skeletal bodies rise onto the illuminated stand. Under the witness of a hundred eyes, Hux’s hands move in a perverse blessing as he pulls closed the flesh of the corpse.

The guts and the bruised organs are positioned within the hollow of the frost crusted stomach. Hux leans over the table while he creates the line of stitches under the navel, breath caught in his chest as thumbs the red-purple bloom of inner flesh closed. He tenderly holds the deadman’s head by the nape when he turns the body onto its chest to continue his work on the curved back that even in death seems raw with pain.

Left to the cradle of the frost, the body of the young man has remained untouched but for the hands that tore him from life and the pests of the birds that had tried to pick him apart. Hux gorges his eyes on the pale skin, the vulnerable curves and tender places left blooming with deathly bruises.

Hux scolds himself into order, but it becomes more impossible each time he allows his eyes to wander. He cannot hinder the smirk that crooks his face as he shifts the body onto the mended back. His hands latch onto the curve of the softening hip, the hollow of the back that tempts to bring his hand lower. But Hux stays his need.

“Hold this for me,” the clergyman instructs as he positions a soft, limp thigh to the juncture of the hip, slotting together the bones.

A creature with withered wings of rotting feathers clambers to Hux’s aid. The chipped, filthy claws cut into the pale skin while Hux pinches together the ripped flesh and presses the needle in. He can hear the excitement of voices crowding above him as he mends the muscles the best he is able and tightens the stitches, closing the red under a canvas of ivory white.

Once both legs are attached to their junctures, the clergyman tends to the flaying cuts on the thighs that rise to the groin. Hux leans close to the work in the dim light. His breath warms the skin as the sutures close in ripples. He thumbs the sown cuts, over and over, thinking of the cushioning of yellow fat beneath, of reopening the skin to witness the blood drip onto the snow.

Hux does not reconsider the kiss he places on the rowed stitches. Or the one that follows on the silk thin flesh that is white – having never been touched by light. He pushes his tongue against the puckered threads and tastes the sweetness of human filth that he kisses away with wet lips.

Hux lifts his mouth from the bruise marked skin and sees a gathering of imps around the head of the deadman. They gurgle and coo as they pull at his cold cheeks with withered fingertips and pry at the gnawed lips, unhinging to jaw to peer inside with bulging, tumbling eyes. They chitter and bounce on their animal feet when they lick the blood from their fingers.

Wiping saliva from his mouth, Hux chides the prying audience before taking up the needle that fell from his hand. He directs the clucking faces toward the legs and the severed knees by pulling until the skin and muscle snapped.

The small, pinching fingers part the torn flesh and direct Hux’s hands where to sow the thread. The clergyman murmurs in conversation with the attending creatures that watch him from the stage of the altar and the church pews, gaining answers in ricocheting squalls.

Hux hears the bones grind and click under the hands the hold the limbs and instruct him in the binding of the thread.

“Is he almost ready?” Hux’s low voice rises as he leans to see where the needle point touches the papery skin. “Have we done enough?”

The wave of trembling wings shudders behind the clergyman as he stands from the crouch and places together the ankles. He mends the tears and grasps the bones, echoing the bruises as he carries his touch to the maimed hands.

“It will be a shame to leave him like this.” The words are feverish as Hux brings the severed fingers to the stumps. “A body… So precious… Abandoned to those wretches. I couldn’t leave it. Do you understand?”

The chattering rises as the pulls of the thread become frantic. Amber eyes quiver and spark in the rafters like autumn leaves as the shadows bulge with shapes of limbs and wings.

The clergyman stoops over his work, ignorant to the shrill voices of the squirming vermin and the stuttering rise of the pale corpse’s chest. Mumbled syllables tumble from between Hux’s teeth as he attaches the ruined thumb, closing the wound on the tip. He soothes the frayed stitches with his lips and drags his kiss to the lines of the palm that he presses to his face.

Fingers curl on the curve of the clergyman’s jaw and squeeze. He stops. His lips lift from the cold palm.

Feet are pulling on the cloth of the altar. Knees rise. Collapse. Numb toes scrunch in the soiled fabric.

A hitched breath. A groan, muffled by the rot stuffed throat. Hux turns and follows the stitches on the convulsing alabaster chest that strain like teeth and the neck bulging and heaving as though hosting a growth of maggots.

Nails cut into Hux’s cheek as bruised lips open under the droops of black hair as the deadman wakes with the witness of a thousand eyes. He sighs, body lifting in an arch. His eyes tip into his skull, becoming two pools of milk behind the wet black lashes.

Hux leans over the altar, bracing his hands on the wood beside the pulsing stomach. His eyes are struck on the point of the rising chest. The pain of the chipped nails cutting through the skin of his cheeks is as sweet as pleasure.

Knees drag across the altar as the clergyman climbs to sits over the deadman’s body, draping the precious creature in the black of the robe. The hand on the clergyman’s jaw drops away and rolls across the pale chest, as limp as a foal’s legs. In slack wonder Hux watches as the crooked, chipped teeth yawn from the scabbed purple lips.

“He is alive?” Hux whispers, lifting a hand to pull aside the dark hair as the milky eyes roll and struggle to focus the pupil in a bowl of amber. “He breathes?”

A tug on the hem of Hux’s sleeve wrenches his attention. The shadows coo as the incomplete hand is lifted toward him, covered in slick prints of infantile fingers.

The clergyman grimaces and takes the hand by the wrist. He finds the needle and bows in the dimming light as the candles by the altar gnaw at their stubs.

Settling his weight on the hollowed abdomen, the clergyman begins to work to the sound of the man beneath him moaning. He whispers, trying to soothe, “Shhh, shh— Hush you poor thing. The Lord has not been kind to you, but I will wash you of sin. I will bring you anew— _Hush_.”

As dumb as a mad animal, the man thrashes and bleats in blind terror as shadows murmur and churn. Hux crushes the wrist in his grip to stop the seizures as he stitches the ring finger on the frost kissed stump.

“Almost complete—” Hux mutters as he pulls the last suture. “Almost—”

The silver needle spins as it drops from the light of the withering candles. The dark eyes of the corpse follow it from the altar until the shadows collapse over the fine silver bone.

A gasp is kissed from the winter stung lips, cold as the death’s chill. They return nothing as the clergyman grasps the deadman’s skin and crushes the pale hips with his wide palms. He pulls apart the senselessly writhing thighs and crouches between them as he takes the slack jaw and pushes his tongue against the sighing mouth to taste old blood and the stale breath of death.

The man whines as Hux holds him by the throat and offers the pale arch. The chipped teeth are licked as the clergyman holds a heavy cold thigh against his waist. He presses his abdomen against the soft stomach ravaged by stitches while he kisses the cold cheeks as if in blessing and runs his teeth on the sutures placed under an eye.

“My boy… You precious thing.” Hux rubs his thumb on a sallow cheek and watches the dazed eyes roll under the lids, opening to him like river stones.

The buckle of a belt breaks against the timber floor. The shadows scatter like mice. Pale limbs rise and fall on the altar around the clergyman who stoops over his prize that stares at him with clouded eyes.

Fingers push into those cold lips and come away with curdled blood as nails scrap down the chin and the bulging neck that has been bruised by the memory of death.

Hux sits on his heels as he pushes aside his robes and watches the writhe of the pale body, pulsing with consciousness. The sutures strain and the bruises rise against the skin as stains of ink. Without blood to hum and pink the flesh, there is nothing to rouse the man’s cock and flush his cheeks as Hux raises the pale legs and takes them into one hand, grappling the twitching body onto the stomach.

The man chokes and heaves as the clergyman shoves against his back for the trembling arms to collapse. Legs droop from the table, falling apart limp as the shadows chitter and squeal while the holy man kneels above the hapless creature.

Hux drags his nails across the man’s spine, disturbing the sutures of the ragged tears and the line that wrought together the torso to the waist as he pulls on the ties and buttons of his trousers. Hux’s breath is choked when he fists his cock. His knees weaken and shake, toppling him over the body beneath him that seems to ache for his warmth.

Shutting his eyes, Hux listens to the beat of his blood over the moans and whines dripping against the timber of the altar. Hips push against the hand bracing his cock. The hem of his sleeve that droops over his hand beside the head of the lovely creature is tugged.

Hux bites his tongue as he strokes his closed fist around his cock that burns in his palm, wet with his own filth. He leans over the body beneath him and pushes his lips against the dark hair, breathing in the smell of the wild – winter and dirt, the decaying trees and stink of animals.

The clergyman swallows the stale odour. Spit drips from his lips as his cock flushes a deep red within his fist. He feels the shivers beneath him, the whimpers and the weak shifts of the body as the precious creation attempts to lean into the warmth of his robes.

“You are beautiful,” Hux whispers, dressing his lips against the curve of a cold ear. He bites it and licks with the flat of his tongue. “You are my beautiful doll.”

Hux is blind to the multitude of ember fleeting eyes over him. The voices are a hum that does not reach him as he lowers his chest to the curve of the winter cool spine and sighs against blood curdled hair that catches on his lips. His cock pushes against the cold skin and his palms are flat on the altar, knuckles bone white.

Spit drips on the alabaster skin as Hux ruts, senseless and moaning through his deranged pleasure. The shunts of his hips urge the man forward on the altar until a fist on his neck keeps him in place while groans roll through the air above the deadman’s ear.

The creature held to the table forces his head to turn, scraping his teeth on the altar as he glimpses through his hair the bulging shadows. Before a scream, an ugly wail forced through dead flesh, ruptures his throat, his stare is filled with the clergyman’s pale grimace as his lips are bitten into a kiss that twists the sutures and punctures the bruises.

“Shh… It is okay,” Hux tells the creature as he squeezes on the taut throat. The purpled lips open as hollow sound empties from between the broken teeth. “I have you—”

The weight eases and the man heaves, turning to see Hux drip spit onto his fingers as his rut falters. Hux drags his fingertips across his tongue, sucking on the skin and pulling wet knuckles free of his lips.

A moan shudders the air as a hand falls on the bow of the man’s back, pressing him down as nails cut into the death sweetened skin. His lips falter on the waves of syllables as fingers are forced inside him, making room in his body as scolding air is breathed against his ear.

The body is cold, there is hardly strength to clench on the fingers Hux has forced inside between the shaking thighs that he keeps apart with his palm. He finds the soft, easing flesh of the entrance to be ravaged – torn and stretched from place. Hux looks down on the man’s body and sees, for the first time, the scratches where his fingers burrow into the abused flesh – running with spit around the rim.

“Poor thing,” Hux murmurs. His fingers slip free to press into the dark scratches in the crease of the man’s ass and by the seams of his thighs before taking his cock and coating it with spit. “What things has your flesh seen? Did they pleasure themselves with you—”

The creature cowers at those words and claws the covering of the altar, staring madly into the dense shadows around him. But Hux shushes and presses down on the man’s throat as he takes his cock and begins to push it inside him, sighing as the cold flesh takes him.

The skin drips with cooling spit and leather of the clergyman’s boots scrapes on the table of the altar. Hux lays himself over the man’s seizing back as he presses himself to the hilt. He bits into his tongue and groans when he feels the muscle twitch and shudder when he ruts into the soft curves. Hux envelops the man, covering him with his flesh and cloth. His thighs open to accommodate the girth of the hips that press toward him.

“How could something so soft, so beautiful, be torn apart in such a monstrous way—” Hux hefts himself onto his knees and cups the man’s drooping head. He lifts it toward the light to see the man’s lips open with the feeling of the cock pushing inside him. “Who made you this way? You precious thing.”

The air above the altar grows ragged with sounds as the clergyman mounts the pliant creature. Pain, pleasure – it’s all the same delightful ache that raptures Hux. Something hungry squeezes inside him when he hears the captured man moan. He feels his hips push to meet the slow, shallow grinds and the knees raise on the altar to offer the sweet flesh to the clergyman

Hux grows overcome with choking pleasure when he looks over the suture curdled back. His beautiful doll, for him to keep and to love, for him to cut and to mend.

He takes a hand of the deadman and lifts it to his lips. He swallows on the mottled fingers, tasting the copper around the stitches. He feels the fingertips press on his tongue, urging deeper as he languidly ruts into the cold body, chasing the ache inside his stomach.

Hux struck between staring onto the pleasure lax face as the fingers are fucked into his mouth in the mockery of a cock and closing his eyes to the crawling bliss in his skin. He forces his pace onwards, grunting as his hips meet against the man’s ass, scratching the fabric of his robe on the raw skin until he is certain there will be marks of red.

The sounds between them are wet, gulping with the shifts of their hips underneath the droops of black fabric that hide the red flushed cock thrusting into the ashen flesh. Sweat is scalding inside Hux’s robe, dripping from his chin as his movements become frantic. He drops his head between the pale shoulders, deaf with the sound of his own breathing that shudders through his chest.

A harsh, uncaring thrust topples the man across the altar after a weak attempt to gather onto his elbows. He shrieks and his toes bend unnaturally against the timber as he pushes against the clergyman. The sound brinks on pained, but Hux only groans into the pale throat as he continues to fuck the creature.

“Just a little more,” the clergyman mumbles. “Hush, hush, little doll. Just let me—”

It catches Hux breathless how well his cock fits inside the ravaged flesh, how the body aches for him as though he has always owned it. He swears that it warms for him – just for him. It can’t be an illusion when the boy’s face seems to flush so lovely in the low light as his eyes skitter behind the bruised lids.

Hux takes the body by the hips and pulls it back as he sits on his haunches, forcing the man back onto his knees and palms. The clergyman’s robes slip aside, revealing the bruised skin of the corpse, the splay of black and purple across his thighs and ass – scratched and torn.

A content sigh leaves Hux as he holds apart the man’s ass while his cock begins to slip free, red and dripping. Hux turns his mind aside to make this last and take all the pleasure he can from the moment. So, he lazily begins to brush his fingers through the dark mangled hair of the bowing head.

“Sweet thing, what do I call you?” Hux speaks softly, lifting the man’s head toward by the shaking chin. “Do you remember a name?”

Something distraught and absent passes through the dull eyes of the deadman and his lips attempt to open and sound a response. But the syllables come chocked and distant. “Ki—L… E—h—” the man whimpers.

Hux presses closer to listen, but the man falls and Hux winces when his cock leaves the body. The man’s chest presses against the altar and knees slip apart as Hux crouches over him.

“Kil— K—y—ah—” he mumbles against the filthy cloth – garbled as though his mouth is stuffed full.

“Kylo? Do you mean to say Kylo?” Even as Hux speaks, he finds his patience slipping as he aches for the cold grip of the man’s body.

A groan is pushed from Kylo, upon the clergyman deciding that to be his name, as Hux enters him. Hux sinks his hands into lax muscle of the hips and ruts into him, grinding into the meat of Kylo’s thighs that willingly open to the clergyman.

“You are so sweet, Kylo,” Hux praises. He echoes the words with a soft touch to the man’s shoulders that have been scored with ragged scrapes. “You are so soft, so beautiful. Let me use you—”

Kylo twists his face and sucks his lip between his teeth as Hux pushes something inside him that causes Kylo’s knees to collapse – his elbows crack on the timber and his teeth scratch across the cloth. He doesn’t try to make another word as Hux gasps and fucks him, shoving Kylo forward with every thrust he takes.

The timber of the altar creaks. The floorboards shudder. Kylo is pushing back against Hux. His nails scrape the table, fisting meagre handfuls of fabric as though it will keep him steady beneath the clergyman. He feels the rough cloth of the robe collapse onto him, consuming him, as teeth latch to his neck and Hux’s rough breath hushes him. Warmth floods Kylo’s body.

Hux melts lax against the deadman’s back as he continues to numbly rut while his heart stutters against Kylo’s spine. He swallows and rubs his hands over the man’s ribs, soothing the cold skin as he pulls away.

“Thank you,” Hux means to say as he rubs his palms over the bumps of Kylo’s spine after feeling his hand around his throat for the last time, but the words are silenced by the coughs that shake Kylo.

Hux lazily pushes his cock into his trousers as Kylo continues to heave, curling inward onto himself while splutters rile inside his throat. Hux watches his thighs shudder, forcing milky liquid to drip from his worn entrance – abused before Hux had yielded pleasure from Kylo’s body.

Spit dribbles onto the floor. Kylo breathes as though through broken bones. He attempts to sit, but his arms shake and legs collapse limp.

Hux reaches toward the man, urged by strained concern. “Kylo—”

Before Hux is able to touch him, Kylo tumbles from the altar. Hux lurches after him, but does not move from the table to join the shadows on the floor where Kylo is sprawled, rocking with his head in his hands.

There are sounds of gagging and Hux watches the dark head twitch. Palms slap against the timber floor and Kylo’s back bulges and bows as a wet splatter hits the wood.

Silence swells, scraped raw by a sound Hux recognises for crying. A shiver crosses Kylo’s back as he crawls onto his knees and slow drips patter the floor.

The clergyman stands from the altar. He pulls the collar of his robe straight as he walks toward the kneeling man. Kylo looks from his palms and Hux sees the dark rivulets on his chin, black in the dark of the church. He crouches beside Kylo and takes his chin between his fingers.

There are no tears, blessedly, but Kylo’s eyes seem red even in the dark. His lips and chin glisten and a metallic stench stains the air. Hux looks down onto the floor and sees the culprit of Kylo’s choking: It’s a drab, fleshy thing that catches the dwindling light in a sluggishly dripping puddle of black.

“Now how did you manage to do that to your tongue,” Hux sighs and picks the piece of flesh from the floor. The muscle is cold and tough as he grips it in his palm, the coarse surface scratches his skin as it slips.

Kylo is taken by the hand and lifted to his buckling feet. Guided to the altar, he is made to sit with his feet swinging – bashful as he crosses his arms in front of his limp cock. Hux smiles at the gesture and reaches to search for the spool of thread.

The shadows have retreated to their corners, to coil into the cracks of the timber walls, under the pews and in the rafters, but something urges the spool toward Hux. The needle is pierced through the thread, prepared for the clergyman to take to the task.

With the tongue in his hand, Hux pinches Kylo’s cheeks to open his jaw. Pain jars the pale face as crooked teeth cut the pursed lips. The clergyman feels the hinges of the bone slipping unnaturally and his hands do not not soften even when the sobs begin. He pushes until the bone clicks, wet and muffled, and slips into place as Kylo’s eyes pinch shut.

The clergyman does not hinder his work, reaching inside Kylo’s mouth to pry apart the broken teeth and see the bloody purple stump of the tongue curled at the back of the raw mouth. It is covered in congealed globs of black filth, thrashing like an animal against the throat.

Grinding his teeth, Hux pushes his fingers inside and pinches the stump. He ignores Kylo’s confused noises and flinches when he places the lifeless tongue inside and pierces the needle through the flesh. Hux sees the strain in Kylo’s jaw to keep it pried apart and rewards him with soft words as he works to mend the creature.

The last sutures are tied and the tongue lies in a cradling bed of red, twitching and turning as Hux removes his hand. His work is good. Hux smiles when the crooked teeth slowly close, safely stowing away the prize. The clergyman hopes that he has done enough. He hopes the shadows will know this too.

There is the sound again. A dry whimper that Hux cannot stand. He forces his patience as he looks to Kylo’s red eyes.

“What is it now? Are you in pain?” Sated of what he needs, Hux is unable to pry kindness into his voice and can’t care enough to try, even when Kylo stares at him like _that._

The man gulps and cowers when Hux lifts his arms, only to cross them.

“Well? Speak,” the clergyman demands.

It takes Kylo many tries to manage the words as he gulps and stutters like a maimed animal. But then, with his dumb soft eyes turned to his swinging legs, he rasps, “I am cold.”

He can’t be cold; Kylo isn’t living blood and flesh. He is a mockery of life, without true sensation of need. He can’t feel cold. Hux tells him as such.

Kylo does not listen. Shivers are raking his skin as his elbows and knees twitch and jitter with his stutter of, “I am so cold.” His eyes red and blown as he looks to the clergyman. “Please—” he whimpers and reaches for Hux.

The cold touch on his wrist reels Hux away. His lips are pinched and eyes wide. With his lust worn from his flesh, he struggles to find passion for skin touching his own – for hands clinging. There is work to be done; he hears the shadows oozing and the whispering from the corners of the church. They are waiting for him.

Kylo’s head lifts form his palms when cloth scratches across his shoulders. The heavy black robe tugged around his body and Kylo’s ripped knuckles scrape on the rough wool as he struggles to hold it around himself, burying his face in the high collar.

“Come,” says Hux, holding a hand toward the shaking man.

Kylo stands, part with the shadows in the heavy robe that splits around his pale legs as he walks between the pews with Hux. He keeps to the clergyman’s side, yearning for a whisper of warmth that he feels ooze from his skin. But Hux walks onwards, only offering the burning iron of his hand.

The candle stubs waver beneath the stained icons as the doors of the church open and die in a shudder of silence.

 

 

 

The aspen and pine creak with the weight of snow. Spring is not kind in the hinterlands behind the mountains and the snowdrifts have swept the forests hollow. An echo of sinking footsteps is the only breath of life that aches through the cold.

A traveller falters and turns, glancing onto the well of land from which he had come where the frozen saplings of birches stand curled like figures of hunched children. The man wipes the frost of his pale moustache and beard, licking the raw crust off his lips, and heads onwards.

There is snow on the hems of his coat, inside his heavy boots and behind the collar of his shirt that feels so useless he may as well be walking in his bare skin. He hunches as he walks, exhausted from the meagre weight he carries.

A sound claps between the trees. The traveller watches the white horizon.

The clap, twice fold heavier. It repeats like a bell toll as the man takes a step toward it. He passes bare aspen like fingerbones crowned with the morning sun. The whistle splitting the air before ending with something meeting its aim pulls the traveller’s face into a frown.

There is a break between the trees, a falter in the white where the black walls of a leaning building rises. The traveller forces his steps to quicken as the church spire rises over him, the cross wavering against the blue sky.

A slam echoes as the traveller walks through the crooked pickets of the wall that surrounds the holy grounds. He looks to the carved supports of the domed roof that is like a charred head under a coat of white snow.

An axe slams against a stump, splitting wood in equal portions. The traveller watches the pieces become arranged before the axe is lifted once more over the head of a man dressed in a drab grey coat and unfitting black trousers. His dark hair droops limp over his eyes as splinters spray the air when the axe shatters the timber.

The traveller stands at a distance and waits for the man to take notice. But the wood on the crooked stump is only replaced and parted once more by a swinging cut.

Having waited long enough with his feet frozen in the snow, the traveller calls out as the axe is hefted. “Are you the attendant of this sacred place?”

A black of wood is cleaved and the man’s broad shoulders hunch as he reaches for the broken pieces with his earth-worn hands. The traveller almost does not recognise the words when he speaks.

“I am no holy man,” the stranger replies.

“But you tend to it?”

A grunt, acknowledging, but the man does not turn to face the traveller. “I do what I am asked.”

“Then perhaps you will let me through those doors so that I might warm myself. I am very cold and I have far to—”

“Go inside.”

The traveller’s teeth clack. He watches the steward’s back rise and fall under the roughly woven coat that seems a stitch too short around his wrists.

“I am travelling to see family,” he continues. “I must have lost myself some mile back. I promised I would—”

“Go inside,” the steward repeats. “Warm yourself, if you are able.”

The traveller presses his lips flat, but takes the invitation and walks through the snow drifts, past the steward toward the church doors that glimmer with frost in the early sun, crowned by the drooping icicles. As he takes the first step, he pauses and speaks once more.

“Does he keep you here?” asks the traveller, braving a glance to the hunched man.

The steward continues his work, numb and remote, but replies, “I am kept by choice.”

“Then go while it remains your choice,” the traveller cautions. “This church will not stand here long, not when people plot to burn it to the accursed foundations with that man who claims to be of God within the walls.”

The axe halts, raised moments above the block of wood. It is dropped, slack, and dragged along the snow as the steward straightens. His legs in heavy oiled boots push through the crust of white as he turns to the steps of the church. For the first time, the traveller sees his face – grey and hollowed under the black hair, the narrow chin and the upper full lip muddied with a stubble. He thought it was shadows when he saw the rucked, uneven lines crawling across the man’s skin.

“These people…. Would see a holy man burn… To his death?” The steward’s absent eyes follow the traveller as he steps closer.

“He is not holy— Never been so,” insists the traveller. “That creature—” He checks himself when his voice rises. “Whoever arrives at this asylum, seeking for shelter from winter or the cruelty of mankind, comes to the trap of this _demon_. They vanish – stolen from our Father’s grace.”

The steward looks onto the church’s property: the path pushed through the snow where a sleigh had passed this dawn, the chipped wood thrown out toward the yard of buried crosses. The aspen saplings have grown close to the picket line, clattering with icicles in the slight wind.

“They took a boy recently, if you must know.” The traveller steps to the steward as his frenzied eyes widen in their white pools. “A young man— His name was Ben. An odd name I know, you might have heard it. He belonged to a godly family— He was lost in winter, when he went wandering off with a company of hunters, seeking fortune—”

The steward’s face does not change, giving no symptom of his concern as he stands there, hand tensing and easing on the curved handle of the axe.

“That man— That creature—” The traveller gestures to the doors of the church. “He took the boy’s life for his own in some perverse way. He is an ungodly thing. He is filth—”

The words stutter with a dull clap. The traveller’s feet seize as the axe is wrenched. Blood speckles the white ground and the steward’s hand as the traveller looks onto his chest where a bloom of warm blood runs.

A whistle warns the traveller to raise his eyes. A sharp gulp yokes his throat as his jaw is thrown askew by a slab of metal lodging in the hinge. A crack. A wet rip. The axe leaves the man’s face, ravaging the skin and bone.

He shudders and reaches for the ruined pieces of his face, unaware as the axe is lifted and brought down onto his shoulder. He falls, failing to keep his strength as collapses into the snow and heaves with the rupture of pain. The steward stands over him, ignorant to the hand reaching in a plea as he lifts the savage husk of a weapon and crushes the bone.

The man, like a thrashing insect, is pinned down to the snow with each blow until a lifeless twitch calls his departure. The steward is not hindered by the empty eyes as he continues to crush the axe through the man’s chest, pushing the shattered bone into the organs and pulling them into threads.

The blunt head of the axe is thrusted into the mess that could have been once recognised for features. Shards of teeth scratch the iron, something soft slip from underneath, hair clings to the edge.

The steward lifts the blade and flicks aside the mess with the lethargic twitch of his hand. His lip curls as he throws a careless glance over the aftermath; inevitably, he will be the one to clean it.

“Kylo.”

The steward looks to the open church doors. Obedient admiration takes his eyes.

“Why did you give me a false name when I asked what to call you?” demands the clergyman who stands on the steps above the snow. His hands are held at his waist, as white as dove wings against the black of his robe. His pale eyes are narrow from the shock of daylight.

Kylo takes the axe from hand to hand. “I didn’t,” he insists.

“Your name is Ben,” pronounces the clergyman, taking a step toward the bank of snow. “And yet… You told me it is Kylo.”

“I _didn’t_.” The axe shifts palms. “I asked you to _kill me_.”

The clergyman’s shoulders droop and a smile takes his mouth. Though he appears cold, with his white skin like the bone from the mires and his hair like spice stained silk, his bruised eyes crease with a smile.

“Come here, Kylo,” says Hux.

The axe is dropped into the snow and the dark head of the steward bows as he walks to the steps of the church. His blood dusted face turns shyly toward the clergyman, his eyes full of hope.

“Closer.” Hux nods in a gesture and waits until Kylo stands beneath him. “You know you will have to clear that from the yard,” he says without a stain of contempt.

Kylo nods and holds his hands behind his back.

“You will drain what is left from the flesh.”

“And the body?”

The clergyman shrugs. “Burn it. Bury it.”

Kylo nods once more and turns to begin the work, but the clergyman’s voice hinders him. He calls Kylo toward him and takes the man’s hair into his hand once he has approached, pulling it from his neck to show the ashen, mark dusted skin crowned by silver sutures to the yawning sun.

A kiss is pressed to the stitches of Kylo’s throat, soft and damp, reverent as though offering a blessing. Kylo tilts into it, and the one that follows on his jaw. The steward’s hands tremble as they clutch together at his stomach.

“Are you cold?” Hux’s fingers are red iron under the collar of Kylo’s coat as they feel for the rows of sutures that mark the gauges.

Kylo’s chin twitches down in agreement. He is shaking as he leans against Hux’s chest – the tremors are a presence that haunts his skin, laughing in his bones as Hux lights fires through the church.

Kylo is pulled to Hux’s chest with the hands on his neck.

“My poor boy,” the clergyman whispers. “You poor, precious thing.” A kiss is pressed onto Kylo’s hair. “Come with me.”

The clergyman steps into the church and Kylo follows the kiss on his lips. Shadows slip liquid on Hux’s deathly skin and his eyes open when Kylo’s close – obedient in the holy man’s arms.

The trees creak, the distant river hushes, blood blooms on the snow. The church doors close.

 

 

 

 


	2. Bonus Chapter: Spread My Spirit Like a Flock of Crows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!TRIGGER WARNING!!!!
> 
> PLEASE READ THIS BEFOREHAND AND DO NOT PROCEED WITH THE CHAPTER IF ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ARE TRIGGERING:  
> graphic depictions of gang rape, sexual violence, gore, dismemberment, beheading, necrophilia, vomiting, hallucinations, death due to exposure to elements, manipulation, blasphemy, consumption of human flesh, abandonment, wound fucking
> 
> in other words, if you found the previous chapter difficult to read PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE!!! THIS IS THE FINAL WARNING I CAN GIVE YOU!
> 
>  
> 
> and finally for all those still here. this is an early christmas gift to ydnsm for being the most wonderful bustling bumble of bees ever and was written by her request c; this chapter basically explains what happened to our benny boi before he landed in hux's hands. it also has a soft nugget at the end to soothe all the sad

The silver bells stung the air with their song and the dogs lifted their heads to look out from the circle of sleepers. Ben covered his face with wear roughened sleeve cuffs, breathing the muggy air between his palms.

A hunter sighed and turned, snoring into the twisted collar of his coat across the black peak of the dead fire from where Ben lied. Footsteps creaked in the snow, outside the circle of silver bells guarding the sleepers. The hounds watched them through the dark as Ben shook to the chattering of his teeth. The hunters never heard the sound, not of the wandering wandering feet in the snow or Ben begging his tongue to remember prayers.

Ben heard the trickle of bells the first night he slept on the cold ground among the hunters. He thought it to be the wind, when silver domes rocked on their strings as he watched the last of the fire embers. Then, the footsteps came, wandering beyond the reach of sleepers until the dogs began to cry.

That first night, Ben laughed and shouted for the drunk to sleep. The footsteps dropped into silence and Ben lifted his head to look for the stumbling fool. In the last light, he saw the six figures of the sleepers around the fire and the little green fires shone from the pits of the hounds’ eyes.

The bells rang again, frantic, from the poll raised behind Ben. They were the wards keeping the hunters safe as they slept about the fire.

That night, Ben felt not a hush of a breeze on his skin as he stared into the closing eye of an ember, listening to the shrill voices of the bells.

When the hunters rose in the morning, sighing at their sore backs, Ben did not touch his food or speak a word until they began to walk. Then, he asked if people often pass through the woods, trampling on even during the night.

The hunters looked at Ben. The silver bells rang from their belts.

“Don’t go near it,” a man said, without meaning to explain. “Fool.”

“Don’t go near what?” Ben demanded.

“The boy should have stayed home,” another says, no longer to Ben’s ears. “Should have slept in his feather bed.”

They walked until nightfall, hunting nothing, hearing no one – not even the wind that brought the snowdrifts.

On that second night, Ben did not sleep and watched the line of silver bells that was raised around the fire by the hunters. He watched until his eye could not bear it and the firelight died. The dark collapsed.

A laugh, as delicate as a child’s, rang beside Ben’s ear. He flinched and struck at the sound, gasping from the rough linen that was spread against the snow.

He stared at the dark as the bells rang into silence – uncertainly far or near. There was no wind hushing in his ear, no hounds whining. Ben sat on his haunches, breathing hard.

The laughter came every night as Ben lied in the dark with his ears struck with his palms, tongue pressed against the seal of his teeth. He heard the footsteps walking the snow, wandering circles to leave no print by dawn.

No different was the fifth night as Ben lied, waiting for morning. The bells were ringing in a choir like the dawn birds in the pitch of winter. Ben moaned into his fists, biting curses into his fingers that he ever left home, ever begged the hunters that were so reluctant to take him to the city. They had cautioned him to stay, to listen to his mother – to not hunt his ego. But Ben still went and refused the string of silver bells offered to him with a laugh – as though those silver voices could ward evil things from him.

Laughter rang in the branches over the sleeping hunters, joyous and hollow like the silver bellied chimes. It fluttered, from place to place, never staying, descending and circling toward Ben who shook and cried.

Abruptly, as ever, all sound ended the moment it seemed as though breath would brush on Ben’s tear flushed face.

He lifted his head and sniffed his dripping nose. He could hear the strings of bells swing gently, barely voicing their song. Ben heaved himself onto his knees – shaking.

His voice had no strength, but something made him speak, “Is someone hiding out there—?”

The cold air swept on Ben’s tongue, stinging the bleeding cracks of his lips. He saw only the faint ambiance of the snow – so dark the forest was all colour bled into one blur of murk.

“Do you want something with me?” Ben raised his voice. No hunter stirred beside him, but there was something shifted in the air.

A laugh cooed from afar, somewhere between the pines.

“Who are you?” pleaded Ben.

But the laughter only swelled like the belly of a hive, growing, rolling, fleeting between the trees. Then, the bells rose around Ben and swung, lifting a havoc of sound.

Ben fell back onto his hands and shouted, “Who are you!”

The laughter returned, muffled, as though retreating from Ben. The snow creaked with passing footsteps.

Anger rose in Ben’s chest and stung his tongue like boiling water as he threw himself onto his feet. He did not think as he forced his feet through the snow – reason a shunted animal in his mind.

Gripping onto the pole that held the stringed bells, Ben stepped over their cautioning trill. The murmur of their silver voices followed him as Ben ran, chasing the footsteps he was never certain were even true.

He hardly made it far; Ben fell into the snow, having payed no attention to the buried shrubs that caught his foot. He spat the snow out from his teeth and he crawled onto his feet, scrubbing the ice flakes out of his eyes. His bare hands ached with the cold and his heartbeat trembled in his burning throat with the thumps of the footsteps receding far ahead.

The chase became a stumble as Ben forced his way through the forest, hands outstretched to feel the trees in his way, gripping the raised channels of their bark like husks of old skin. Ben could barely hear the sounds that had led him away as he trailed between the pines, falling when the buried brambles caught on his ankles and cut the thin leather of his boots.

When the burn in Ben’s chest became unbearable, he stopped. He breathed through his drooping mouth and at once everything became an ache; his chest trembled and feet refused to rise from their burrows in the snow. Doubt leeched into Ben’s thoughts: he wanted to go back to the hunters and sleep, beg to be returned home once morning comes— Beg for his mother—

A snap of teeth beside Ben’s ear and reason shook from him as he fell into a frozen underbrush. He heard the croak of laughter and the hush of feet in the snowdrifts. He climbed to his feet to run, but he was swept from thought.

Down between the trees, far from where Ben stood, a pale yellow light shone. It was only pinprick, a dot that threw out arms of ambiance. Ben wondered how he had not seen it as he ran.

“Hello—?” He called out, taking a step. “Is someone there?”

Ben’s feet lurched from the drifts of frost crusted snow. He stumbled, red hands reaching forward. There was not another sound but his breathing.

“Hello—? Please—Help me, I’m lost—”

Fire snapped and the ambiance fractured. Ben sheltered his face within his palms and peered from his fingers when the light returned. The fire was closer than he thought before; he could see its pale tongues, lapping at the black night.

Squinting through his hands, Ben walked forward. Shadows formed around the fire, sitting in the perfect unity of a circle on the drawn benches of felled logs. A craftsman’s hand must have placed the hounds circling the feet of the hunched men who held their eyes fixed on their fists as they sat in the yellow light of the fire that pulled colour from their clothes.

Ben stands between the trees by the edge of the light, watching the flames falter on the frozen figures. There were no footsteps in the snow.

Ben turned back to see his path, but the light refused to go so far – offering him only the dull shadows of the trees. He was certain that he had not walked for so long that the snow swept over his tracks and the dawn came without him noticing. But it could have been the only reasoning for why the hunters were awake, watching the sullen fire.

Ben looked to the hunters and called to them by name, but none turned. It was as though their grey slouches were painted onto the murk as the firelight wavered over them.

Calling to the hunters in a meek voice, Ben crept to the felled trees. He reached forward, but his ankles were tied with aches and he collapsed onto his knees. The hounds did not rouse at the sound, preferring to sleep at the feet of their masters.

The light bowed into a shadow as though there was a wind. Ben crawled on his red hands toward the hunters, his eyes large and wild as his mouth stuttered pleas. His fingers fell through the snow and his frozen hair hung over his eyes.

Ben knelt at the fire, his knees burrowed into the unmarked snow. His hands were numb and he could not hear past the shudders of his heart. He closed his eyes, certain that within a moment he would sleep.

As though a bellow of wind, something threw Ben down onto the snow. A laugh whistled by his ear as he reared from the ground, eyes full of melting snowflakes. He saw nothing in the grey branches of the pines that could have thrown him from his knees.

Ben opened his mouth to curse, but the sound stilted on his tongue when he saw the faces of the hunters, tilted toward hum around the fire.

They were red. Not from the cold stinging their skin, but more for the lack of it on the bone. Perhaps that is why their eyes seemed to bulge from the hollows of their skulls that were raw with husks of stripped flesh.

Something dripped onto the spotless snow and Ben realised their hands were not gloved as their flayed fingers twitched on their knees. Red spots dotted the snow and Ben turned to the hounds lying between the boots to see black furred imps curled in their place, blinking with wide charcoal eyes.

Ben threw himself back, clawing the snow, kicking his feet like a whipped dog. He did not hear the terrible rise of sound before it collapsed over him, clawing him from the shadows with a multitude of hands. Ben shrieked as he was taken by the ankles and neck, choked and reared like a dog on a leash.

Ben screamed with the fear of a slaughtered animal as fingers grasped his jaw and sunk into his mouth, tearing his soft cheeks as he was thrown back toward the fire. He collapsed like a calf felled and he whimpered as his bare hands met the scorched coals when he tried to crawl – unseeing the waiting arms.

Ben was grasped and raised, his kicking legs taken by the ankles. He saw night, snow and the red tongues writhing between yellowed teeth as he tossed forward to feel fingers under his jaw as his shrieking mouth was brought to a bloodied skeletal face. The taste of his lips was invaded with a putrid flavour as a slick tongue sampled him. He didn’t dare peer at the face pressed against his own, feeling the damp heat of breath and the hollows of the flayed skull connected to his lips.

Gagging on the thick limb of flesh thrusted into his mouth, Ben cried out as hands twisted into his clothes. He bucked like a flung doll when his coat and shirt were torn. His eyes snapped from behind the lids and stared at the sunken face of something he did not recognise as human, shining with blood in the strange pale light. Ben gulped and slobbered when the tongue was pulled from his bulging throat. He heard the heave of laughter that pulsed on his bared skin.

Arms held Ben by his chest, a hand braced on his throat as a wet thing latched to his lips, prying inside. Tall skinless figures like rotting giants hid Ben from the light of the fire as his boots and trousers were torn from him. Hands appraised Ben’s flailing thighs with warm tracks of blood, sinking between the soft pale flesh without shame to feel the round slope of his ass and grasp his limp cock.

It was almost pleasurable, to feel the hands praise Ben’s body, even when they choked him with fingers sinking into his throat— Until he felt the first tear. He screamed, gagged on the appendages thrusted past his teeth when blood ran thick on his plush white thighs that he tried to clench together. But his legs were ripped apart as teeth sunk into the skin, gnawing, as arms held his knees, widening the stance until his pelvis hurt.

A hot mouth without lips swallowed on the soft fat of Ben’s stomach. A thick tongue coated in yellow mucus licked from his groin to his lips where it nestled against his own. Ben winced on the taste, forgetting it when he felt hands bracing over his ass, lifting him once again, changing the position and opening him up to the feeling of something wet that made him shriek.

Ben tried to turn, to look over his shoulder, as he felt the wet horrid thing press roughly into his body. He succeeded, for a moment, and glimpsed a bloodied deteriorating face with rolling yellow eyes pressed into the softness of his open legs. Two figures were stooped over Ben, palming his flanks, pinching the fat and the loose flesh, snapping something to one another as the imps chittered about their feet.

Ben was dropped forward into the snow, tongues and fingers ripped from his body. He cried from the shock of cold. His hips and jaw trembled as he watched a grotesque red figure shakes off mottled blood crusted clothes from its arched red back. His attention did not last long as Ben’s hair was taken like a leash, forcing his face into sticky, warm flesh.

Recoiling, Ben opened his mouth and gagged. But the lapse in judgment was used against him as a thick shaft was shoved past his teeth. Ben’s eyes bulged and his jaw clicked and cracked.

Ben could hardly make sense of the limbs touching him in the dark, but he knew that the thing being fucked down his throat was a cock. It moved unnaturally, pulsing against his sobs as he pushed against the weight of the body leaning over him. But his arms were taken and twisted in their sockets as his hips were raised, shoving him forward on the cock that choked him, forcing saliva out of his stuffed mouth.

Held between the curious hands as his mouth was fucked and something burrowed into his ass, Ben heaved like a horse forced to be saddled. He threw back his legs, bucking, trying to kick away the skinless figure as he felt a serpentine tongue shunting deeper toward his gut through his ass – spreading him and stuffing him as though preparing his body.

A sickly rotten stench was pressed flush against Ben’s face, burrowing his nose into sticky muscle before pulling away. For a moment, Ben could breathe as he spat filth from his mouth. He whined when he felt hands spread his legs in the snow for the bleeding maw to press against his split thighs.

Ben’s throat was stuffed once more, choking him with heaving thrusts as he screamed and his jaw cracked. Hands tore Ben away from the creatures using him and he bleated in pain as he was hoisted up against a body. His legs were held apart and Ben kicked, breaking his heels on the red faces with slopping tongues that croaked with laughter at Ben’s efforts.

A tongue wrapped in a chokehold around Ben’s throat, pulling him back to stare up at the empty sky as the heat of a body pressed between his thighs. He felt a broad, swollen cockhead slip down his ass, breaching him.

Acid swelled on Ben’s tongue with the shrill scream that spewed him with the bile as he was fucked and blood spatter the ground between the feet of the red skinless idols. He shrieked as fingers burrowed into his mouth, pulling the sides of his soft cheeks, seeking something within.

Ben moaned when his tongue was yanked from between his teeth, pulled until his eyes rolled white with the pain. His pelvis seemed to burn as he was fucked and blood bubbled down his pale skin every time the thick, inhuman girth sunk into him.

Fingers climbed into Ben’s mouth, digging to clasp his tongue. He yielded to them, hoping pliancy would satisfy. He felt the skinless fingers burrow deeper, tugging at the root of his tongue.

Ben realised his mistake too late as he struck his hands forward, ripping his wrists from the hold of a red fist. He scratched the sinewy flesh of the demon until his nails became dislodged. But still his tongue was wrung from its red bedding and he screamed through the pulsing blood.

His weak, clawing hands were pulled away as he watched the slip of his tongue be lifted to the fire. He heard laughter and felt nothing as his fingers were swallowed into a jagged mouth.

Bone cracked, vessels popped. Ben’s jaw hung low, unhinged, dripping red over his swollen lips. His eyes drooped as the stumps of his fingers were mouthed and licked. He felt the joints crack in his other hand as the fingers were bent against their natural angle and the bones were ripped from their hollows. Ben did not fight as his tongue was thrusted back into his mouth and past the threshold of his throat. He swallowed. Choked.

Ben was lifted from the cock buried inside his violated body. Delirious, he watched distorted faces stir around him in the dark. He couldn’t understand the words passing around him, feeling the tugs on his body that pinched the fat through his skin and palmed the soft curves. Quickly, the touches became violent as the creatures refused to share Ben.

He was thrown and pulled, gripped by hands that burrowed bruises as he was stolen from hand to hand. Ben was thrown to the snow, moaning when his weight fell on his disfigured hands. Arms encompassed the width of Ben’s waist and fingers pawed apart his thighs to watch the blood drip down his skin. He was dragged back and lifted to his knees.

An engorged cock entered Ben and his legs shook while globbed blood bubbled from between his lips. Nails lacerated Ben’s spine and his arms were twisted behind his back, lifting his face from the snow to the girth urging apart his lips. Spitting, Ben refused.

Fingers twisted into Ben’s mouth and he bit. Ben was struck across his jaw, cutting his cheek, and he felt his teeth jar and crumble under the knuckles into the empty cavern of his mouth.

Ben dribbled onto the snow and gagged on the blood. The moment was used to grasp his jaw and pinch it apart as his mouth was entered. Crushed between two mounting bodies, Ben was subdued to the sensation of being filled – being fucked while held by hands praising him with bruises and drooling cuts.

However, the creatures were still not satisfied, not even when more rancid fluid filled Ben’s mouth. His eyes watered and sight bled as his bloodied lips were left gaping and dripping. Vomit surged in his mouth as he was lifted by his limp arms.

Ben felt a tongue on his cheek, writhing toward his hair where it burrowed. He grimaced, baring his red teeth, but the scowl drooped when he felt a hand on his stomach – pressing on his navel. He wasn’t permitted to look down; Ben’s jaw was braced in a hand as a tongue explored his cracked teeth, leeching on the taste of blood, but still he felt the curled nails burrow like insects into his indented navel.

What was a twitch of fear became a tremor and Ben writhed like a strung animal when he felt the skin of his abdomen split, giving up the yellow bursting fat. This did not hinder the creature fucking into Ben’s body. It purred against his ear, fulfilling its filthy needs with the shuddering heaves of its cock, ignorant to Ben’s screaming as his stomach was gored.

Frantic, Ben pushed and kicked against the assailant, but his arms were taken and twisted above his head. He sobbed, blubbering pleas with his bleeding mouth that could sound nothing through the gag of his own tongue as his wrists were broken with a wet, clicking sound. He watched through his thick tears as the flesh of his stomach was peeled apart, opening his throbbing guts to the night air.

The skin of Ben’s abdomen snapped and the innards strained and spilled. Ben opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t make a sound. His inverted gut distended and collapsed as the creature holding him by the thighs continued to fuck him.

A hand delved into the open mouth of Ben’s stomach, sinking into the near-black clotting blood as his lips were forced into a kiss with inhuman jaws. He heaved the warm, rancid air puffing into his choked throat. He moaned and the pain sounded like pleasure as gagged hiccups were yoked from his purpling lips by the shaft pushing through the soft spilling ropes of Ben’s stomach.

Ben’s features were becoming ashen under the tears and blood pulsing from his nose and split lips. He sobbed through the kiss that nestled in his mouth like a parasite. The noise must have irritated the creature as is grasped his throat and pressed until he gagged on the feeling of his own tongue forced in his throat.

Ben’s throat clicked and saliva gushed. He looked down onto the mess of his stomach over the fist holding his neck. Blood dribbled from his mouth with the hiccups as his legs were raised around the red frays. Mouths latched to Ben’s ankles, gnawing on the purpled toes. Ben hardly felt the snap of the joints as teeth scratched on the marrow, sucking and tonguing the breaks.

Ben’s head fell against a red skinless shoulder while unsatisfied hands picked apart the skin of his knees and struck apart the bone. Ben only moaned when his thighs were twisted in their beds of muscle. Dimly, he heard the crush of bone, but that may have been the lipless mouth closing around the pointed curve of his ear and chewing past the cartilage.

Limp strings of skin hung on the hollow of Ben’s ear as fingers burrowed like leaches into his hair and the pulsing heap of his stomach. Semen bubbled in the red and ran pink to the snow. Ben’s eyed were rolled into his grey face as a dark plump organ was lifted from his sternum to the mouth of an inhuman red face that curled its tongue around the flesh like a ripe fruit.

The liver tore between the rotten husks of teeth. Ben trembled in the hands that tangled inside his body, picking apart the innards. To his delirious mind, it all felt like pleasure – at last.

Ben’s skin was clothed in red, laboured sighs left his lips as his legs were twisted from his hips and broken free – thrown into the night air. Curious tongues lapped at Ben’s sweet blood and he smiled, letting his head loll – face ashen and lips purple like the skin of ripe plums as bruises swelled beneath his eyes.

He was fucked through his muscle snapping and limbs tearing from his disfigured body. Ben struggled without true intent as the remains of his body were exchanged between hands. He was taken and used – fucked and filled. He did not feel the cock inside his gut forcing out the slipping organs and the blood with floods of semen.

Consciousness seeped from Ben. Ringing numbness took him as his waist was gripped and the skin between his hips and ribcage ripped like linen. The black imps climbed onto the lifeless cut of flesh like dogs while Ben’s living remains were dragged out onto the snow.

Some feet away, Ben saw his frost blackened fingers and arch of his foot thrown between the shadows of the chittering demons. He hadn’t even taken notice of his arms being twisted from their sockets – the pale wings of their palms long gone.

There was a hand on Ben’s neck, pressing him into the snowdrifts. His eyes swam with something that could have been tears, or the cold taking his sense.

Ben did not feel pain when his neck broke like a frost struck branch. He had only seen the figure that kept on fucking the crevice of his erupted guts in the red snow. That was the last of what his eyes witnessed before his head was torn from his white neck to the choir of laughter.

 

 

The fires have not died since the first crisp morning of autumn. Kylo had moaned at his aches and shuddered in his piled clothes until Hux complied with quiet duty. He brought firewood every other dawn before the light returned while Kylo slept in his bed – eyes closed blissfully as though he can feel the warmth.

Sometimes, it is still not enough: even sitting beside the coals that spit embers, Kylo complains of the chill underneath his skin. He rubs at the stitched wounds, picking between the silver thread as though he can pluck out the frost. Hux pushes away his hands and only then Kylo shudders with warmth.

“Put your hands on me, please.”

Hux turns from the fire as Kylo daintily takes up the edge of his white shirt between his grotesque, mismatched fingertips to offer the sight of his thighs bracing Hux’s hips as his red cock sinks into him. The stitches are bulging on his hips, sighing like lips as Kylo rises and falls by his own need, but his cock is no more rigid than when he first climbed onto Hux.

Sometimes, Hux considers cutting away that useless husk of skin; it’s of no use to either of them. But he keeps it as a reminder that Kylo’s pleasure is never true and that Hux is the only one that is able to feel and take advantage.

“Touch me,” Kylo whispers, lifting the hem of his shirt to his chest – showing the lined cuts and the crusted sutures around his purpled nipples.

Hux sighs and turns his head against the pillow. His eyes are closing with the weight of the day’s work, but Kylo never feels the same exhaustion and night after night he climbs onto Hux like a dog in want of attention.

Kylo leans forward, holding himself on his hands braced on the mattress by Hux’s chest. The drooping shirt covers them both as their eyes crawl across each other’s features. Kylo chews on his purple lips and sighs with the lazy rise of his hips. His dark hair, unwashed, gapes to show his missing ear and the spiderweb of silver stitching. He seems a wilderness roughened dog with the single arched ear peeking out. Hux often tugs at it, when he can’t get Kylo’s attention otherwise.

Hux lifts Kylo’s hand from the mattress and looks at the stitch puckered stumps and few whole fingers marked with teeth. Hux swallows around the halved ring finger and locks his tongue around the frayed stitching, tasting the cold beads of dried blood.

“You are so— So warm inside.” Kylo’s voice shakes with happiness and his fingers press on Hux’s lips. He allows them inside and sucks on the cold dead skin.

The whimpers Kylo lifts into the air of the dark bedroom are profane. His movements quicken over Hux’s hips, letting the loose muscles of his body capture him in the cold flesh. Hux lifts his legs and presses his soles into the mattress, fucking into Kylo’s body and shaking him from the seat; he can’t help himself, not when Kylo is so pleasant, so placid with need. So, Hux obliges and fucks him, sucks on Kylo’s fingers and licks away the saliva as he fills Kylo’s flesh with warmth.

Falling forward with gracious sighs, Kylo drags his fingers out from Hux’s mouth, drawing trails of spit on his chin underneath which Kylo hides his head. He adjusts his legs, splaying them out across the mattress as warm cum seeps from inside him once Hux’s cock slips from the chilled breach of his body.

Without waiting for the complaints, Hux rights the shirt on Kylo’s back and reaches for the covers, heaving up the lax weight of Kylo’s body. There is a sighed ‘thank you’ when the edges are tucked over Kylo’s cheeks.

Hux says nothing. His hands are on the lumped curve of Kylo’s back and his drooping eyes are resting on the doorway where the light has failed to reach and the shadows seep. His fingers twist into the covers. Kylo is unaware – at peace.

 

 

 

 


End file.
